Makers of Peace
Jesus gets up from dinner. He knows what’s next. He knows he’s been betrayed. And he knows he’ll now be tried by the very institutions he’s come to overthrow, the Empire and its religious collaborators.
His friends are about to watch their hero be brutally murdered. Given that he knows what’s next, Jesus’ message is astonishing: ‘My peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you.’ The thing he wants them to remember, to hold in the front of their mind as they watch him die is peace.
What must they have thought? Here’s the Prince of Peace, promising once and for all the very thing we all desire most: peace. Could there be anything better than that; individual tranquility, social equanimity, order and concord? They don’t foresee what was coming. Who knows what they must have imagined?
To the reader, the context makes his statement paradoxical, that what Jesus wants his disciples to remember, to practice, as they watch his execution is peace. It’s especially strange since its precisely this message that got Jesus into trouble in the first place - for announcing the arrival of his Kingdom of peace.
The disciples’ minds might have hearkened back to Jesus’ great Sermon. He’d spoken about peace then. They might have remembered this funny thing he’d said, that peace is made. It isn’t the default setting. It isn’t nature’s natural state. It doesn’t obtain on its own. Peace is the result of concrete action. It is made. Perhaps they recalled today’s text as they went out the door towards Gethsemane:
Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God (huioi theou).
Over the past weeks we’ve been tracking the idea that Jesus’ Gospel is about the foundation of a new society – the Kingdom of Heaven - which realises God’s messianic promise for God’s people, finally, to live with God as their King.
That Kingdom has a culture, a set of customs, values and behaviours. What this culture promises, is ‘makarios’, happiness, flourishing, the possibility of individuals and the whole human community being all they can be. That’s what the Sermon on the Mount describes.
We’ve considered at least two practices having to do with peace.
In all that you do, he says first, insofar as you are able, act towards others in a way that’s righteous, exhibiting justice, giving to others their due as children made and loved by their heavenly Father, which includes things like, respect, care, hospitality, friendship and material support - in short, loving others equally to the way you love yourself.
And when things go wrong, when people fail you, Jesus council’s mercy. Don’t demand recompense. Don’t insist on punitive measures. Instead, release each other from your debts so that you can go forward without residual antipathy and on good terms. That’s a hard word. But it’s how God treats you.
Be righteous. Be merciful. Such things promote peace. They’re its preconditions. Now Jesus adds another thing: make peace. If you want to be counted among God’s children, the key is peace.
What might that mean? Much of what Jesus says over the rest of Matthew 5 explains what he has in mind. Let me offer a few observations:
First, peacemaking consists, at the very least, in making amends. The issue here concerns not others’ failures towards you, but instances where you have failed, where someone has something against you. Jesus is unambiguous in expecting us to seek reconciliation, not just coming to an arrangement, an agreement, drawing a line under it, but renewing and repairing the relationship. Failed a friend, defaulted on some commitment, spoken ill of someone, left a disagreement unresolved, hurt someone’s feelings, acted inconsiderately, been selfish, caused some kind of harm… it’s your responsibility to acknowledge it, to own up to it, to take responsibility for it, and to do what’s needed to make things right.
In fact, says Jesus, you should treat this with huge urgency. He puts it like this: “if you are offering your gift at the altar and remember someone has something against you, leave your gift there. First go and be reconciled; then come and offer your gift.”
Deciphered that means you are not welcome to stand before your maker until you’ve tried to make peace. Don’t pray. Don’t bring other offerings or acts of service. Don’t sing words of praise in worship. God doesn’t want to hear from you until you’ve done what you can to restore right relations. It’s that important.
But, don’t overlook that making peace asks something really hard of us. You have to look at your failures. You have to acknowledge them, weigh them, take the measure of them. Not only that, you have to go towards, revisit them and correct them. That’s hard. Who wants to do that?
Easier to let things simmer, sleep on it, let bygones be bygones.
But, Jesus takes a hard line. The consequence of leaving these things unaddressed is not just that you’re unwelcome before God, it’s also that God will expect you to repay in full the cost of your wrongdoings (which suggests you can’t be forgiven until you’ve sought forgiveness). He expresses the idea like this: “your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.” Now, I can’t say exactly what that means, but it doesn’t sound good.
Point being, if the Prince of Peace is your King, you’re required not only to attend to the areas of conflict in your life but to address their causes too, which are in you, your attitudes, your values, ideas, aspirations and interests that set you in opposition to others.
This inward-looking, self-examining, dimension of peacemaking relates to something else Jesus says. It has to do with the posture we adopt toward our enemy, whoever that may be. It’s not just that we need to fess up when we misbehave. He asks us also to take on the sort of attitude that means no one is our enemy. The idea connects up with this idea of being children of God. He expresses the idea like this:
“You have heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Jesus point is that being children of God, being peacemakers, entails something about the way we relate to others, especially those who antagonize us, even act maliciously towards us or undermine our good. As God’s children we’re called to behave like our Father, who does not allow antagonisms to change his disposition toward us, but acts with benevolence even to those who make themselves his enemies. That’s the call of the peacemaker, to live, insofar as it is possible, without hard feelings, not keeping track of other’s wrongs, not regarding others as adversaries, but mirroring the unconditional acceptance of God who loves even those who set themselves up against him.
Now, that seems like a huge ask. And without God’s transforming grace it seems improbable even for the best among us.
But, it’s just worth just pondering what might result if we all by grace, but as a matter of necessity, made it our policy not only to maintain right relations, but to confront the origins of our antipathy, and to be transformed into the likeness of the one who loves even those who choose to be his enemies. What if we put that much priority on it: that without making peace, our gifts and our worship are unwelcome before God? Imagine what kind of community would result.
Anticipating the immanent face-off with his enemies, Jesus gets up from dinner and speaks peace. Over the next hours he models it, not instigating a riot at his arrest, not calling down angels to defend him, but acting peaceably in the face of fatal persecution. What no one knew, save perhaps Jesus himself, was that God’s Peace can’t be stopped. Because God’s peace transforms the world.
Perhaps you have some peace to make today. Don’t hesitate. Do it now.